SLDC Program Details
Reaching All Sectors
Our programs will cater to all sectors – not only professionals. We will encourage all business to also participate – especially tourism business that operate in ecologically sensitive environments. Our curriculum will educate educators as a first principle. We will reach community leaders and volunteer organizations and give them tools that will enhance their delivery of services and help many social programs to get at the root of problems of poverty. The Eco-Center programs will provide a hand up to disadvantaged families and communities and poverty reduction will be a measurable result. Our programs are vocationally orientated and will give adult students skills to become self-employed and to collaborate to create enterprises or work in new “social enterprises” that will work not only for profit but also for environmental benefits.
Design for sustainability crosses disciplinary lines, however, interdisciplinary approaches have been absent in conventional college and university curricula. In a sustainability context,
Eco-Center’s potential contribution is a unified theory of human settlement to relate all scales--large scale bioregions, city regions, neighborhoods, urban fabric, and ultimately, individual buildings and open spaces. The compartmentalized world of different disciplines and different systems works against that notion of a unified theory. People who work on human settlements should have a common core design education, before specializing in various disciplines. Many kinds of skills will come out of the Eco-Center’s interdisciplinary reorientation: architect/urban-planners working on a very large scale; others work on buildings; and some work on the design of product. A wider range of design problems will involve collaboration with people of different disciplines at a broader range of scales.
The Eco-Center extension services are a critical component for achieving mission to reach outside of the instructional environment and support the application of sustainable development in the community into our sphere of work. This aspect of our work will set our program apart from so many others. Our purpose is to transform information into knowledge in the minds of our graduates and then continue to support their steps in applyingwhat they have learned so that it becomes, in their hands a real and valuable know-how.
The Eco-Center, through its Distance Learning Division (DLD) will distribute credit courses and certification programs via digital satellite technology to a variety of receive sites throughout America and other countries. DLD, by the virtue of the production of new WEB-based courses will become a key player within the operation of the proposed Virtual University. What is clearly needed at this point is a successful demonstration of the value of this approach in rural communities such as those selected for this project. Rural communities have historically been behind urban centers in the use of new technological tools to receive information. This project will reverse that trend and provide select rural sites with a new innovative means to improve the delivery of educational programs for career advancement and training.
Global Outreach & Leadership
The Eco-Centerwould establish a *InformationCommunicationAnd Collaboration Technology(“ICCT”) Program as a Global Extension Service to provide Eco-CenterTeams access to intranet servicesthat permit the Teams to publish their project plan at a Team Website, which is then accessible to other Eco-Center Graduates who can give advise, feedback and financial support. The Teams are to work ascollaborationswith an Advisor selected to join each Team from among our Certified Graduates. These interactions are essential to the vision for wide spread projects and for the provision of the necessary Global support and encouragement to many local Teams as they implement their Grass-Roots Projects.
The Eco-Center would become the principal sponsor of the Solaroofgarden Global Web Community to establish a worldwide Grass-Roots initiative for the collaboration and sharing of know-how for Solaroofgarden projects that individuals and families can undertake to build sustainable homes and communities. The Solaroofgarden Web Community will engender Leadership and Participation by individuals, families and communities across all cultural and ethnic lines. It encourages the formation of Teams that will bring the North and South together (through the internet and intranet) in a collaboration that brings wide spread GLOBAL human resources to focus on the practical support the LOCAL implementation of projects. The publication of project plans and results will assist the diffusion and adoption of best practices for sustainable development. The Eco-Center policy of “opensource” publication of know-how and “best practices” will inspire worldwide collaboration and has the potential to arrive at fundamental solutions to hunger and could mobilize the creativity to win the global war on poverty. Sharing our American experience with sustainable living and livelihoods development will help to pull everyone up the learning curve and many mistakes and loss of time and effort will be avoided.
A secondary goal is the purification and reuse of wastewater for food and biomass production in urban centers and rural communities. The methods for treatment include aerobic microbial and aquatic-plant treatments. The conservation and recovery of rain and irrigation water for crop productionis a unique and important benefit of the proposed demonstration program. A further goal is the development of crops for energy processes where biomass is converted to bio-fuels, one advantage of which includes the sequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The Centers will refine technologies for closed-cycle systems that have the potential to significantly contribute to community or regional self-sufficiency by producing an abundant supply of food, water,and energyon a sustainablebasis.
The Centers will undertake to study the creation and control of advanced ECO-CENTER Structures to produce various crops, in America and other localities in the region. Our advanced building construction technology provides a closed-cycle, controlled environment system that monitors and intelligently controls daylight, cooling and humidity so that in spite of extremes of the tropical climate the Eco-Centers will operate efficiently and cost effectively.
The ANPRC Eco-Center Method:
Learning and Doing
With the whole of humanity as the client for sustainable design, the Eco-Center must think globally and act locally. Community outreach is essential to effective local action. In “Green Building” education, our collaborative Eco-Center must prepare students for this critical practice future. To that end, the collaborative/interdisciplinary Eco-Center brings the university, the business community (providing financing) and the community itself (represented by non- profits) together around community-based projects.
In these real projects, an interdisciplinary team attempts to solve and provide for a community need. Students learn how to build and get experience with clients who could not otherwise afford architectural services. Sequentially, non-profit organizations connect to a university with as targeted project. Once a student team is in place, then the business community can effectively contribute from a sensible tax-deductible way, with materials and expertise. Resource groups can also provide materials. The result is win-win-win. Students get real experience. Students and faculty benefit by acquiring a wider range of skills than in the normal studio. Faculty can come together to develop models of community work, can offer themselves as consultants, and improve their teaching. The community gets the fruits of collective professional/community labor, and the university and the city benefit from having a viable community service program.
The Eco-Center is a facility that will demonstrate an integrativeapproach to problem solving, and a balanced, flexible approach to design communication, listening, and presentation skills. In this model, projects produce tangible results from which students get both economic and sociological overviews of decisions as professionals working in the field of sustainable development. Design has realistic constraints beyond idiosyncrasy or style. Our method seeks to implement change at the Eco-Center level, immediately. It provides students with experience of whole systems interactions instead of components. The entire process is included-research, concept, working with the community, selecting materials and their installation in the built environment, etc. Students work with sustainable development in practice and address the civics, social and cultural aspects of design in a process that emphasizes the inclusion of non-designers. Students learn that the process of getting things done requires personal flexibility, flexibility of who is on the team, and flexibility in how a process works. Consensus building is vital collaborative reality at the Eco-Center. Avoiding the concept of individual ownership of ideas is critical to the success of these projects. This is further described in reference to our role in building the World Wide Web opensource community for sustainable development know-how.
Model for a collaborative community-focused sustainable design process.
At the ANPRC Eco-Center, the best students, professionals, and faculty do work that advances the knowledge and practice of Sustainable Living. Our program is not just for the best students, but we recommend a yearlong base (or even a full four or five year program), involving all designers of human settlement. School leaders must take a careful look at institutional barriers to collaborative interdisciplinary processes and the next steps to lower those barriers. The community-based research clinic is a possible new model. In the 1960's, community design centers (CDC’s) flourished. They provided mainly technical outreach. To some critics, many CDC’s neglected academic rigor and long-term reflection on lessons learned. However, exemplary models exist though information about them is not easily accessible. Documentaries of these models should be produced and distributed to create a wider network of knowledgeable community design advocates. Many communities have bulletin board mechanisms, and are in touch with one another, but a network with universities and the professions could make a substantive difference.
A further aspect of our curriculum and teaching/learning model use small study teams to address selective community needs and is not modeled on community design/build or the older community design center idea. The team envisions alternatives that may have been overlooked and go through a participatory process with the community. The Eco-Center does not do the plan or design for a community. The Eco-Center teams develop the principles and ideas, and then communities use these methods on a do-it-yourself (DIY) basis, but with lots of collaborative advice and support. The Eco-Center is not competing with the professional community; rather it is expanding the market for the professional community. The Eco-Center sees the city councils, the city managers, the director of public works, and the director of the development organizations as their students. It is quite a different model than the collaborative design/build studio. It works well because it empowers people who go back and become agents that make change happen. The Eco-Center regenerates the community activist way of operating.
The Eco-Center will protect the interests and the role of those most at risk, putting community participants at the center of power where they can take ownership of the development process, participate in the research, and decisive role in adapting designs to their needs of their community. The Eco-Center may offer the community many design process options or lead a very small focused project--a small structure or piece of the built environment--that gives focus for many other community-initiated activities.
Recommendations:
Design for sustainability crosses disciplinary lines, however, interdisciplinary approaches have been absent in conventional college and university curricula. In a sustainability context, Eco-Center’s potential contribution is a unified theory of human settlement to relate all scales--large scale bioregions, city regions, neighborhoods, urban fabric, and ultimately, individual buildings and open spaces. The compartmentalized world of different disciplines and different systems works against that notion of a unified theory. People who work on human settlements should have a common core design education, before specializing in various disciplines. Common core design education participants would include architects and engineers working on transportation, soils, and hydrology or civil engineering; landscape architects, planners, and natural scientists/environmentalists. All design human settlements. Afterwards, each specializes according to their individual scale of intervention.
In the existing culture of architecture education, the traditional studio model has placed emphasis on individual work for a studio master, prizing originality and individuality. The jury system has rewarded and encouraged individualistic behaviors and attitudes. In contrast, designing for sustainability requires collaboration. The biggest impediment to learning to collaborate is an ethos with which students are inculcated early on. Often, the first signal they get from the jury system is that collaboration, even with their fellow architecture students, is problematic. The primacy of invention over convention, in many ways an unstated principle in schools of architecture, is fundamentally at odds with societal needs and a sustainable approach. What the Eco-Center provides is a paradigm shift from obsessive concern with originality and incrementalism to a healthy and healing intention to create innovations that enhance sustainable development methods and to integrate inventive solutions into a unified method for sustainable living and livelihoods. A well-integrated innovation may have such a low profile that it could go unrecognized. A reward or incentive system to recognize good collaborative work must be created. Inventing alternate rites to reward cooperative attitudes and sensibilities may help students develop new values. Sustainability as a societal project or discipline requires quality in individual projects, but within collective discipline.
Many kinds of skills will come out of the Eco-Center’s interdisciplinary reorientation: architect/urban-planners working on a very large scale; others work on buildings; and some work on the design of product. A wider range of design problems will involve collaboration with people of different disciplines at a broader range of scales.
An interdisciplinary approach:
Provide rewards and incentives for collaboration and interdisciplinary work in teaching and learning.
Develop a common core curriculum for the design of human settlement, built on ecological interdisciplinary principles.
Encourage the relation of various design disciplines through projects and scales of work on human settlements that cross-disciplinary lines.
Establish goals and roles for Eco-Center graduates within a broadened view of the process and participants in the development of sustainable communities.
For advanced studies the Eco-Center will de-emphasize image, style, and originality for its own sake and shift focus to issues articulated above, while generating self-esteem.
Promote sharing of information effectively across disciplines utilizing current technology.
Build on the strengths and diversity of existing exemplars (e.g. schools and centers) of interdisciplinary education.
Reward students with medals or awards for collaboration and/or sustainability.
Core Curriculum to include: introductory courses in sustainability, with sustainable thrust in existing courses, and in special seminars.
Participate in Web Community building and internet based learning and Solaroofgarden development programs in Partnership with Eco-Center.
Develop more virtual Eco-Centers among schools, countries, business, etc.
In the whole-systems curriculum model, both the physical and intellectual environments of the curriculum must be conveyed as a model of the world. The living laboratory of the whole-systems model is analogous to the idea of classroom as pedagogy. Instead of linear progression, lack of horizontal coordination, and walls that divide us into segments, the whole-systems model advocates that any knowledge domain be linked and related to a context. The progression of an education is marked by evidence that a student is capable of combining domains from the previous level. The Eco-Center becomes the container for the rest of the curriculum, however appropriate methods remains an open, continually revisited question around which to construct the rest of the curriculum. Instead of increasing complexity additively, the whole-systems model proposes cyclically reiterating an engagement with wholeness. As intensity increases, the sophistication of tools and methods that students use increases, and the curriculum shifts with increasing sophistication of tools.
Internet and Distance Learning
Our project will identify and develop an instructionally sound, economical, pervasive, state-of-the-art interactive distance delivery system, which will provide working adult students with a means to improve their respective work-related skills.
Experts unanimously recognize the advantages of distance education programs such as proposed. Several of the advantages we see are: a) scheduling flexibility of course instruction allows study around work schedules; b) completion of coursework from a California State University (CSU) campus geographically removed from their residence; c) pace of instruction is compatible with their adult lifestyle; and d) physical limitations do not compromise their ability to enroll and progress through a program of study.
Current distance learning technologies are capable of delivering on many of these benefits, but the effort must continue to connect rural America to technology-based instructional networks being designed for urban centers. To remain competitive in the changing world of distance learning, the Eco-Center will distribute instructional programming over the internet, thus not limiting student participation in coursework because of scheduling, geographical or interactivity concerns.
The Eco-Center acknowledges that higher education is at a “crossroads” due to the changes in student demographics, changes in society and technologies, and changes in the economics of education. With that as a framework, the Eco-Center is planning a near term distance education curriculum that will need to be free of the constraints of time and space; faculty, assignments, now based on classes will be linked to students; there will be a shift from local education to global education; faculty will have differentiated functions and specialization’s; education is becoming learner-centered, rather than teacher-centered; and education will become results-oriented and largely driven by the marketplace.
We will implement “Televised and Technology Supported Instructional Programs - offered through the rapid growth of the Internet that now makes possible the delivery of courses and degrees via computer programmed instruction to people living anywhere in the nation or world. An Eco-Center Website is also being planned in hopes of increasing educational access and to contain costs of delivery of our programs to all communities (Rural and Urban). Members of our programs who may be located in America or in the region or in other tropical climates will be associated in a virtual Web Community which is designed for all to participate in LEARNING through sharing their personal experiences in DOING.
These extension services are a critical component for achieving mission to reach outside of the instructional environment and support the application of sustainable development in the community into our sphere of work. This aspect of our work will set our program apart from so many others. Our purpose is to transform information into knowledge in the minds of our graduates and then continue to support their steps in applyingwhat they have learned so that it becomes, in their hands a real and valuable know-how.
The Eco-Center, through its Distance Learning Division (DLD) will distribute credit courses and certification programs via digital satellite technology to a variety of receive sites throughout America and other countries. DLD will actively support the development of a Virtual University, which would package and market the collective distance delivered technology based academic courses originating from each our University Partners. DLD, by the virtue of the production of new WEB-based courses will become a key player within the operation of the proposed Virtual University.
What is clearly needed at this point is a successful demonstration of the value of this approach in rural communities such as those selected for this project. During the first year of the grant rural communities will be selected and each site will be surveyed and ultimately categorized according to need of instruction. The second year of the grant will involve the identification of five additional rural sites to become a part of this unique network delivering educational program to rural sites.
Each technological innovation quickly establishes a benefits/limitations listing during the beginning phases of development. Identifying the optimum applications of an instructional delivery technology and incorporating those applications into a distance education program greatly determines the success of a project. This project will likewise demonstrate the many and varied methods of delivery credit and non-credit programming via desktop conferencing. Rural communities have historically been behind urban centers in the use of new technological tools to receive information. This project will reverse that trend and provide select rural sites with a new innovative means to improve the delivery of educational programs for career advancement and training.
Desktop conferencing, a new communications and instructional technology-based tool, can provide the means for implementing real-time face-to-face interaction in rural-based distant education programs. Delivering audio and/or video data generated from a desktop conferencing system located on a personal computer is an economical and programmatic reality. The cost of the software, modems, line and access charges, coupled with personal computers will allow many educational organizations to establish multiple receive sites without overextending program budgets.
The occupational education emphasis of the Eco-Center certification allows for a curriculum, which can be delivered to several distinct audiences. Vocational teachers, adult education teachers and public service personnel including community program leaders, planners, architects, builders and developers and their staff are a few of the targeted audiences which should participate will participate in the Eco-Center programs and/or the DLD program.
The work experience portfolio also necessitates a significant amount of face-to-face advisement due to the various ways of documenting and expressing the required information. Working with students several hundred miles away from the degree granting campus also requires communication with students on key issues such as registration, records, course assignments, senior projects, and graduation checks.
From the above, we see the need for a program to include the development and implementation of a more effective tool for initiating and conducting student advisement and delivering of course instruction. The initial planning for the DLD program assumes the use of an on-site coordinator coupled with on-site visitation from the project/faculty director providing frequent and meaningful face-to-face interactions that bring greater effectiveness to the distance learning environment.
The need for a systematized and personal advising/consultation and course delivery system for DLDstudents will become more of an issue as the number of sites requesting access to this program increases.
EcoCenter Certified Green Building Curriculum
The Green Building Certification Program is the primary vehicle by which the Eco-Center will fulfill its responsibility to meet the lifelong personal and professional development learning needs of citizens, industries, and institutions within its service area and beyond. Through its certificate programs, credit and non-credit classes, seminars and special workshops, distance delivered instruction, and customized on-site-training, the Eco-Center brings the resources of to individuals and groups at times, locations, and in formats convenient to their diverse lifestyles.
The Distance Learning Program (DLD) is a division that is responsible for developing and delivering the distance learning programming opportunities from the Eco-Center, which may include:
The Eco-Center would actively pursue the development and the delivery of new and innovative distance learning programs for underserved markets throughout the region. Being responsive to student needs and providing seamless instruction and services to each student has been a major goal within the mission of all Eco-Center projects.
Rural communities within the America and the Region have been underserved by the major universities and colleges, which service their respective residents. The small numbers of potential students limit the practical delivery of outreach programs and make them financially in viable for any educational institution. The Eco-Center is located in a location yet to be identified - however, this project will meet the rural delivery and service challenge by designing and promoting an inexpensive, interactive, state-of-the-art distance delivery system. Furthermore, this desktop rural network will prove to be self-supporting even with limited student enrollments at each participating site.
The impact of this project will prove significant to other rural sites desiring educational opportunities, which have been too distant or too expensive to participate in higher education. The educational opportunity gap between urban and rural communities can be closed and a model program established for consideration by other regions in addition to becoming a self-sustaining program offered into the future by the Eco-Center to tropical climate countries and also adapted (as a model system) to programs in other climate zones.
Goals
Objectives
1.1 To contribute so that horticulture practiced at a small scale becomes a profitable activity and worthy of being exercised as permanent activity of generation of economic development and human well being in the poor communities.
1.2 To strengthen the family economy, generating revenues, increasing the quantity and the quality of the feeding, without increasing the costs of food purchase.
1.3 To create work sources in cities or populations where there are limitations for the appropriately remunerated employment.
1.4 To generate and to promote positive attitudes toward the community administration, fomenting the employment generation leaving of mini productive companies of family administration.
1.5 To give to people of advanced age or with physical limitations the possibility to feel useful and valuable for their family and for the community in which they live.
1.6 To teach the children the nutritious value of the vegetables and fruit and to motivate them to participate in productive activities at family and community level.
1.7 To promote the consumption of fresh vegetables on the part of the poor families without cost of purchase.
1.8 To promote among those currently involved in urban agriculture the use of simplified hydroponics to increase production, or utilize sunspace not currently in use. To promote practices that reduces environmental impacts or urban agriculture including conservation of water, reduction or elimination of fertilizer runoff, and reduction of use of pesticides and elimination of herbicides.
1.9 To promote in impoverished countries, simplified hydroponics as a form of developing among the residents of precarious economic situation, abilities for the generation of small companies producing market vegetables and other plants of high sanitary and biological quality.
1.10To promote among the small horticultural producers, through the technical simplified hydroponics, the convenience of applying a complete vegetable nutrition to obtain maxims crops in yield and quality.
TASKS
D. SCOPE OF WORK
Task I
The project team consists of a variety of qualified faculty and staff from the Eco-Center who are experts by degree, training and experience in their particular field. These talented individuals will work together as our project team to organize, guide and deliver a model distance learning partnership to rural sites as proposed.
Task II
In this task the Eco-Center team will reach out to the rural sites and go through the following steps:
1.We will look closely into what the rural communities need. We will reach out to the citizens and ask questions, listen and learn while developing a rapport with our end user.
2.The partnership will strive to attain a common goal, shared commitment and solutions to how the technologies proposed can help them achieve their objectives and goals.
3.Meet and confer with appropriate UNDP liaisons for project refinements, if any.
Task III
During this task we will train individuals whom the communities have chosen or we will help identify the best qualified person to become a technological assistant site coordinator. The hands on training will be through and quite extensive. We will bring those individuals to our facilities for a comprehensive training seminar on the actual cutting-edge telecommunications technologies that each rural site will be using. In addition to the hands on training seminar we will also be involved in all aspects of two-way interactive communications training. Additional tasks will include but not limited too site visits and continuous technical support to insure the effectiveness to the end user.
Task IV
Market Programs
Task V Adjust timetable and deliveries as necessary and begin project services.
Task VI
Conduct formal evaluation and execute dissemination plan.
Scope of work: Year 2
Task VII
Develop a plan of action for year two of the project. This includes reconvening the project team to capitalize on the lessons learned during year one of the project. Begin program-marketing process.
Task VIII
The Eco-Center project team will be responsible for demonstrating the merit of this project throughout America and subsequently solicit the applications of five new rural sites. The five new sites will be expected to attain the same goals. Commitments and solutions associated with the five sites established for the initial phase of this project.
Task IX
A site coordinator from each new site will be identified and trained in the application of interactive desktop technology. Each site coordinator will be provided with a cursory knowledge of the BVE degree requirements (for participation and completion) and assist-interested students in enrolling in the program.
Task X
Marketing the BVE degree to students within the second selection of rural receive sites will be an ongoing function initiated in task VII. All marketing activities will culminate in this task.
Task XI
Begin program delivery, adjust timetable and deliveries as necessary and continue with project services.
Task XII
Formal evaluation and execute dissemination plan.
E. EXPECTED RESULTS
With the completion of this grant it is expected that a fully functioning rural desktop network will have been developed and regularly receiving course instruction from the Eco-Center. Each of the selected sites will be equipped with a state-of-the-art desktop conferencing system. The software utilized by this project will provide for interactive communication and the ability to share documentation and information from the host site to all network sites simultaneously.
Each rural network receive site will additionally benefit from this project by having a site coordinator trained in the operation of the conferencing system. The site coordinator will also be able to serve as a key liaison from the rural site to the Eco-Center staff and the DLD outreach coordinator which will add a higher level of service to all of the rural students entering the program.
Because the initial program offerings will focus on vocational education and related certification and degree requirements, a cohort of students at each site will receive the opportunity to advance their career opportunities. The community will additionally benefit by having well informed and trained educators working with vocational students.
F. LIMITATIONS
Based on our extensive experience with the core elements of this activity the project team fully expects to be able to meet the goals and objectives as outlined above. Obviously dealing with remote locations that have a variety of technical readiness and differing market demand will present a challenge to project staff. Within the area of connectivity, the matter of the capacity of the Internet service provider(s) will require special attention. In addition, participants may at times be subjected to Internet interference, a condition wherein connections are such that messages are not always received clearly. Finally, the end users, i.e. students, will obviously have a widely varying level of readiness to utilize the full functions of the new telecommunication capacity and services that they will now have, many of them for the first time.
The ANPRC Eco-Center ICCT* For Development of an Internet BasedWeb Community
The Eco-Center would become the principal sponsor of the Eco-Center Global Web Community to establish a Solaroofgarden initiative for the collaboration and sharing of know-how for Solaroofgarden projects that individuals and families can undertake to build sustainable homes and communities. Under the Solaroofgarden Initiative Eco-Center Partners will make social investment contributions for the implementation of sustainable development projects by the ordinary members of the web community. This collective support will be given to individuals and families who are most in need and have the least means. Our Members are encouraged to form Teams to implement these Solaroofgarden projects at the local level. The Solaroofgarden projects in multitudes of localities will duplicate the impact of the Eco-Center by providing visible demonstration of Green Building methods and sustainable development know-how.
HERE IS OUR GOAL:
The collaborative network established through Solaroof in association with ANPRC Eco-Centerwould establish the *InformationCommunicationAnd Collaboration Technology(“ICCT”) as a Global Extension Service to provide Team Members access to intranet servicesthat permit the individuals to publish their project plan at a Team Website, which is then accessible to other Eco-Center Members who can give advice, feedback and financial support. The Teams are to work ascollaborationswith Advisors selected to join the Team from among our University association and certified graduates. These interactions are essential to the vision for wide spread projects and for the provision of the necessary Global support and encouragement to the Local Team Members as they implement the Solaroofgarden Project.
WHAT WE WILL ACHIEVE
Many of the Eco-Center Members in the developing world may not be able to afford the cost of ISP services, such as an email account and access to an intranet where they can author and publish WebPages that will permit the collaboration as envisioned above. Therefore the kind of services that described below would be ideal for our Solaroofgarden community to grow in all parts of the world and reach those in the developing world without concern about how the costs will be covered. Not wanting to make a distinction between Members I would like to be able to offer the same access to these services to all Members of the Solaroofgarden community. What I will propose is that those who can afford a payment for these services will make a voluntary contribution to cover the costs of these services and surplus of these funds, if any, would flow through to the Solaroofgarden initiative to financially assist the Team Projects that are underway or in a planning stage.
The intranet services would be available to all the Members of the Solaroofgarden community and would be accessed through portal pages on the Eco-Center website where visitors may sign up to become members and then register for these intranet services and join Teams. Individuals will be able to find fellow collaborators and advisors and Teams will poll their existing members to accept new team members and advisory members. Having established a working group the Teams would then begin the planning and implementation of their projects.
Visitors and other Members of the Solaroofgarden community will be able to rate theSolaroofgarden projects, offer advice and comments and provide direct financial support to the project. A project budget and a target for financial support will be established as part of the published project plan. Direct financial contributions (by any visitors) and votes by Members will create a non-administrative and strictly merit based evaluation of the existing projects by the entire Membership and the public at large. All projects will then receive an allocation prorate from any indirect contributions (from our commercial Sponsors and Partners, for example) and from any surplus general revenues. After costs have been covered all contributions will flow through to the Solaroofgarden Projects covering each project up to the stated goal amount. The method for the handling of funds would be decentralized and made transparent as a published database; possibly using a mechanism similar to the payments system of www.DevelopmentSpace.com.
http://www.globalgiving.com/news/ds_02-08-06.html
http://www.globalgiving.com/
http://www.knowledgerush.com/kr/encyclopedia/DevelopmentSpace.com/
With theEco-Centersupport these components would be incorporated into the EcoCenter Web Community services:
An Intranet including these features:
· A personal e-mail system
· Facilities for document management (creation, editing, storage and commenting) known as “conferences”
· Facilities for private & public chat
· Facilities for establishing and posting documents onto a web-page (for Team Leaders)
Solaroofgarden– A WEB COMMUNITY DEDICATED TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT:
http://solaroof.org/wiki/SolaRoof/SolaRoofGarden/
The Solaroofgarden community would become a DIY portal for sustainable development technology. All the know-how presented on our site will be provided on an “opensource” basis, which means that there are no proprietary restrictions, and no payments are required for the use of this technology(click here for more information on the opensource concept). Furthermore the technology and information is available to all members for their personal non-commercial use without any cost (but also without any warrantee as being fit for any particular use) and can be modified and reproduced without restriction. The Solaroofgarden community is business friendly; any individual or group can make commercial use of the know-how and those who can afford are requested to make a voluntary payment of 3% to 10% of their revenue from the use of the know-how, according to the value received and their desire to support the Solaroofgarden Projects. Many small professional and construction services business may be established – all with access to the same growing body of know-how. All funds (called Honor Payments) that flow from commercial Partners, who are Materials, Components and Product manufacturersandService companies, firms and consultants will go (as described above) to the support of the current Solaroofgarden Projects. Businesses will be linked to the community website and our Members will relate to them not as “consumers” but as a powerful and empowering collective purchasing group that can set specifications and standards and obtain commodity prices.
Individuals are asked to a voluntary contribution of money for their personal use of Solaroofgarden concepts in their homes or communities, and the individuals and families in the developed nations (the North) are encouraged to assess the value received and in exchange offer a contribution to the Solaroofgarden initiative (Families helping Families). When these Solaroofgarden Projects have had a beneficial result and have helped families and communities in the South to rise out of poverty these people who have been helped are encouraged to extent their support and financial assistance to others who have need to build a project. This “pay-it-forward” policy is similar to that of Habitat for Humanity and can involve the contribution of direct labor by those who have previous experience to offer in the construction and implementation of Eco-Center projects.
THE BENEFITS AND EXPECTED RESULTS
Eco-Center projects are specialized for tropical zones however many of the Green Building methods will be adaptable to northern regions and therefore we anticipate that the Solaroofgarden Web Community will draw membership from many countries. The Green Building methods are appropriate for both the North and South and will help to bridge the development gap by enabling the North to consume less non-renewable resources and to use natural, renewable resources more efficiently. In every home or community our methods will create food & water supply security and safety and contribute to energy self-sufficiency that create the LOCAL conditions that contribute to GLOBAL security and peace.
The Solaroofgarden Initiative will engender Leadership and Participation by individuals, families and communities across all cultural and ethnic lines. It encourages the formation of Teams that will bring North and South together (through the internet and intranet) in a GLOBAL collaboration that brings wide spread human resources to focus on the practical support the LOCAL implementation of projects. The publication of project plans and results will assist the diffusion and adoption of best practices for sustainable development. The Eco-Center policy of “opensource” publication of know-how will inspire worldwide collaboration and has the potential to arrive at fundamental solutions to hunger and could mobilize the creativity to win the war on poverty. Sharing our experience with sustainable living and livelihood will help to pull everyone up the learning curve and many mistakes and loss of time and effort will be achieved.
Introduction to the ANPRC ECO-CENTER concepts:
It is not well recognized that conventional buildings have a greater energy demand and environmental impact than the transportation sector – and there is little effort to advance the technology of building design. A home, for the average person is the largest personal investment we will make in our life and yet our homes produce no yield, return or benefit other than shelter (and sometimes – comfort – depending on our level of spending). The solar energy that is received by the roof areas of buildings on the average exceeds by several times the energy consumed for a building’s cooling and lighting. But buildings are not adapted to harvest this energy. The roof construction is generally opaque although artificial lighting is exclusively dependent on electricity – our most costly form of energy. Water is precious, yet rarely is there any urban or building design priority given to the efficient collection of rainfall. Food in cities is in great demand but the urban landscape is bare roofs, concrete and asphalt – a desert that overheats in the sun. The urban rooftop space is a resource that is unused, close at hand and of great value.
I believe it is important to note that, while the countries in the North and Temperate climate zones extensively research solar technology, the technologies developed to date have had little effect or impact in the Tropical climates. It is clear that the engineering principles for cooling buildings are not well established (except by resorting to expensive air-conditioning) and there is little understanding of how to use to advantage the abundance of solar energy available in the Tropics. The only result we get is the predictable over heating of our buildings. Our Solaroof technology utilizes solar radiation for day lighting, and in addition our technological breakthrough is a new solar energy processes that eliminates the over-heating of the building and the related cooling and/or air-conditioning cost. The extension of these methods to encompass greenroofs and greenspaces in our buildings is known as the Eco-Center method, which will be a large part of the studies that will be undertaken at the Eco-Centers.
The Eco-Center Green Building technology will bring to the Tropics and Subtropics, which includes the Arid-Land Regions of the world, a greater prospect for economically sustainable development and concurrently a lesser rate of consumption of nonrenewable fossil fuels (which can preserve these valuable resources for export earnings and/or future generations). Urban development in the Tropics that is based upon the Green Building methods developed in our curriculum will counteract the negative aspects of rapid urbanization that is currently underway (and expected to accelerate) by providing construction systems that do not rely on conventional air-conditioning technology. Green Building methods such as the Solaroofgarden technology will enable economic expansion and development in the Tropics while minimizing the generation of new sources of CO2 that would contribute to global warming.
Solaroof technology is based upon the use of plants for their ability to transform solar radiant energy into the latent chemical energy of transpired water vapor. Plants efficiently achieve this transformation of energy as a natural byproduct of their Phytomechanisms related to plant growth. The Solaroof energy process both requires and makes possible the growing of a plant leaf canopy beneath the Solaroof. Our roof-level "open access technology" for hydroponic crop production delivers this "Phytotechnology" as an integral component of the Eco-Center construction.
The R & D Program –Solutions for Sustainable Tropics Living
The Tropics and Subtropics offer several options for the configuration of the Eco-Center, including: 1) rooftop; 2) roof-level controlled environment systems; 3) solar controlled environment greenhouse (referred to as the "SCE Greenhouse"); or, 4) Eco-Center superstructures which span over and shade roof terraces and courtyard spaces below.
Option 3) above, the SCE Greenhouse, presents an alternative to conventional field agriculture which is far more productive and does not consume tremendous amounts of fuel for tractors and transportation, fertilizers and agricultural chemicals as does field agriculture. By comparison crop production in the SCE Greenhouse can produce 20 times the yield, much higher rates of return on investment and minimizes the use of petrochemical inputs for crop production. Using the Solaroof technology the SCE Greenhouse can be built and function efficiently in extremely hot climatic conditions and can occupy poorer unproductive land. The SCE Greenhouse can achieve important water conservation and energy conservation objectives for the nation.
Green building technology can reduce the devastation of forest and wildlife lands, which are being appropriated, for low output, high input agriculture. Ecologically destructive and marginal agriculture is no solution for economic development in the Tropics -- it is not sustainable and is only justified by short-term financial thinking.
SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT
The ANPRC ECO-CENTER is a new concept that produces "Solar Controlled Environments ", referred to as "SCE", which are used to build sustainable building projects that are often referred to as “Green Buildings”. The ECO-CENTER design integrates all the structural, mechanical, environmental and biological systems on the model of living systemsso that this technology is in ecological balance and harmony with nature. This approach, to be researched, developed and demonstrated by the ANPRC Eco-Centers, has the purpose of achieving the integration of the living, growth processes of plants called,"phytomechanisms", within the SCE. The operation and study of such advanced closed environment systems will permit us to study, more extensively then ever previously possible, how the phytomechanisms work, permitting in turn, a further refinement of our understanding of the ECO-CENTER concepts, as follows:
http://www.solaroof.org/wiki/SolaRoof/OpenEcoCenterNetwork
1. Advanced Energy Studiesof the Solar Controlled Environment will be undertaken to determine how it is able to modulate solar radiation by means of the liquid bubbles and water-cooling processes. The study of "cool day-lighting" will determine how to best use our advanced radiative filter mechanisms and other heat rejection and energy conversion methods as follows:
2. Advanced Lightweight Structures Studiesfor the utilization of open-web-aluminum-joists and extrusions, which are integrated with a modular membrane stressed-panel, building envelope. Studies will include:
http://www.solaroof.org/wiki/SolaRoof/OpenEcoDesign
3. Intelligent Control Systems Studiesfor the development by the Computer Science and Knowledge Group, of computer based automation of SCE, including:
4. Study of Advanced Biotechnology Systemswithin the ECO-CENTER demonstration facilities will provide an instructional and research closed atmosphere SCE using automation and expert systems for biological crop production, including:
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE ECOCENTER
GREEN BUILDING PROGRAMS
http://www.solaroof.org/wiki/AlmeriaProject/TechnicalProposal
http://www.solaroof.org/wiki/SolaRoof/EnergyCrisis
http://www.solaroof.org/wiki/SolaRoof/PhytotechnologyBiomassSystems
www.goodearthnow.com
Our programs will cater to all sectors – not only professionals. We will encourage all business to also participate – especially tourism business that operate in ecologically sensitive environments. Our curriculum will educate educators as a first principle. We will reach community leaders and volunteer organizations and give them tools that will enhance their delivery of services and help many social programs to get at the root of problems of poverty. The Eco-Center programs will provide a hand up to disadvantaged families and communities and poverty reduction will be a measurable result. Our programs are vocationally orientated and will give adult students skills to become self-employed and to collaborate to create enterprises or work in new “social enterprises” that will work not only for profit but also for environmental benefits.
Design for sustainability crosses disciplinary lines, however, interdisciplinary approaches have been absent in conventional college and university curricula. In a sustainability context,
Eco-Center’s potential contribution is a unified theory of human settlement to relate all scales--large scale bioregions, city regions, neighborhoods, urban fabric, and ultimately, individual buildings and open spaces. The compartmentalized world of different disciplines and different systems works against that notion of a unified theory. People who work on human settlements should have a common core design education, before specializing in various disciplines. Many kinds of skills will come out of the Eco-Center’s interdisciplinary reorientation: architect/urban-planners working on a very large scale; others work on buildings; and some work on the design of product. A wider range of design problems will involve collaboration with people of different disciplines at a broader range of scales.
The Eco-Center extension services are a critical component for achieving mission to reach outside of the instructional environment and support the application of sustainable development in the community into our sphere of work. This aspect of our work will set our program apart from so many others. Our purpose is to transform information into knowledge in the minds of our graduates and then continue to support their steps in applyingwhat they have learned so that it becomes, in their hands a real and valuable know-how.
The Eco-Center, through its Distance Learning Division (DLD) will distribute credit courses and certification programs via digital satellite technology to a variety of receive sites throughout America and other countries. DLD, by the virtue of the production of new WEB-based courses will become a key player within the operation of the proposed Virtual University. What is clearly needed at this point is a successful demonstration of the value of this approach in rural communities such as those selected for this project. Rural communities have historically been behind urban centers in the use of new technological tools to receive information. This project will reverse that trend and provide select rural sites with a new innovative means to improve the delivery of educational programs for career advancement and training.
Global Outreach & Leadership
The Eco-Centerwould establish a *InformationCommunicationAnd Collaboration Technology(“ICCT”) Program as a Global Extension Service to provide Eco-CenterTeams access to intranet servicesthat permit the Teams to publish their project plan at a Team Website, which is then accessible to other Eco-Center Graduates who can give advise, feedback and financial support. The Teams are to work ascollaborationswith an Advisor selected to join each Team from among our Certified Graduates. These interactions are essential to the vision for wide spread projects and for the provision of the necessary Global support and encouragement to many local Teams as they implement their Grass-Roots Projects.
The Eco-Center would become the principal sponsor of the Solaroofgarden Global Web Community to establish a worldwide Grass-Roots initiative for the collaboration and sharing of know-how for Solaroofgarden projects that individuals and families can undertake to build sustainable homes and communities. The Solaroofgarden Web Community will engender Leadership and Participation by individuals, families and communities across all cultural and ethnic lines. It encourages the formation of Teams that will bring the North and South together (through the internet and intranet) in a collaboration that brings wide spread GLOBAL human resources to focus on the practical support the LOCAL implementation of projects. The publication of project plans and results will assist the diffusion and adoption of best practices for sustainable development. The Eco-Center policy of “opensource” publication of know-how and “best practices” will inspire worldwide collaboration and has the potential to arrive at fundamental solutions to hunger and could mobilize the creativity to win the global war on poverty. Sharing our American experience with sustainable living and livelihoods development will help to pull everyone up the learning curve and many mistakes and loss of time and effort will be avoided.
A secondary goal is the purification and reuse of wastewater for food and biomass production in urban centers and rural communities. The methods for treatment include aerobic microbial and aquatic-plant treatments. The conservation and recovery of rain and irrigation water for crop productionis a unique and important benefit of the proposed demonstration program. A further goal is the development of crops for energy processes where biomass is converted to bio-fuels, one advantage of which includes the sequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The Centers will refine technologies for closed-cycle systems that have the potential to significantly contribute to community or regional self-sufficiency by producing an abundant supply of food, water,and energyon a sustainablebasis.
The Centers will undertake to study the creation and control of advanced ECO-CENTER Structures to produce various crops, in America and other localities in the region. Our advanced building construction technology provides a closed-cycle, controlled environment system that monitors and intelligently controls daylight, cooling and humidity so that in spite of extremes of the tropical climate the Eco-Centers will operate efficiently and cost effectively.
The ANPRC Eco-Center Method:
Learning and Doing
With the whole of humanity as the client for sustainable design, the Eco-Center must think globally and act locally. Community outreach is essential to effective local action. In “Green Building” education, our collaborative Eco-Center must prepare students for this critical practice future. To that end, the collaborative/interdisciplinary Eco-Center brings the university, the business community (providing financing) and the community itself (represented by non- profits) together around community-based projects.
In these real projects, an interdisciplinary team attempts to solve and provide for a community need. Students learn how to build and get experience with clients who could not otherwise afford architectural services. Sequentially, non-profit organizations connect to a university with as targeted project. Once a student team is in place, then the business community can effectively contribute from a sensible tax-deductible way, with materials and expertise. Resource groups can also provide materials. The result is win-win-win. Students get real experience. Students and faculty benefit by acquiring a wider range of skills than in the normal studio. Faculty can come together to develop models of community work, can offer themselves as consultants, and improve their teaching. The community gets the fruits of collective professional/community labor, and the university and the city benefit from having a viable community service program.
The Eco-Center is a facility that will demonstrate an integrativeapproach to problem solving, and a balanced, flexible approach to design communication, listening, and presentation skills. In this model, projects produce tangible results from which students get both economic and sociological overviews of decisions as professionals working in the field of sustainable development. Design has realistic constraints beyond idiosyncrasy or style. Our method seeks to implement change at the Eco-Center level, immediately. It provides students with experience of whole systems interactions instead of components. The entire process is included-research, concept, working with the community, selecting materials and their installation in the built environment, etc. Students work with sustainable development in practice and address the civics, social and cultural aspects of design in a process that emphasizes the inclusion of non-designers. Students learn that the process of getting things done requires personal flexibility, flexibility of who is on the team, and flexibility in how a process works. Consensus building is vital collaborative reality at the Eco-Center. Avoiding the concept of individual ownership of ideas is critical to the success of these projects. This is further described in reference to our role in building the World Wide Web opensource community for sustainable development know-how.
Model for a collaborative community-focused sustainable design process.
At the ANPRC Eco-Center, the best students, professionals, and faculty do work that advances the knowledge and practice of Sustainable Living. Our program is not just for the best students, but we recommend a yearlong base (or even a full four or five year program), involving all designers of human settlement. School leaders must take a careful look at institutional barriers to collaborative interdisciplinary processes and the next steps to lower those barriers. The community-based research clinic is a possible new model. In the 1960's, community design centers (CDC’s) flourished. They provided mainly technical outreach. To some critics, many CDC’s neglected academic rigor and long-term reflection on lessons learned. However, exemplary models exist though information about them is not easily accessible. Documentaries of these models should be produced and distributed to create a wider network of knowledgeable community design advocates. Many communities have bulletin board mechanisms, and are in touch with one another, but a network with universities and the professions could make a substantive difference.
A further aspect of our curriculum and teaching/learning model use small study teams to address selective community needs and is not modeled on community design/build or the older community design center idea. The team envisions alternatives that may have been overlooked and go through a participatory process with the community. The Eco-Center does not do the plan or design for a community. The Eco-Center teams develop the principles and ideas, and then communities use these methods on a do-it-yourself (DIY) basis, but with lots of collaborative advice and support. The Eco-Center is not competing with the professional community; rather it is expanding the market for the professional community. The Eco-Center sees the city councils, the city managers, the director of public works, and the director of the development organizations as their students. It is quite a different model than the collaborative design/build studio. It works well because it empowers people who go back and become agents that make change happen. The Eco-Center regenerates the community activist way of operating.
The Eco-Center will protect the interests and the role of those most at risk, putting community participants at the center of power where they can take ownership of the development process, participate in the research, and decisive role in adapting designs to their needs of their community. The Eco-Center may offer the community many design process options or lead a very small focused project--a small structure or piece of the built environment--that gives focus for many other community-initiated activities.
Recommendations:
- Create a new studio model that can serve as a prototype. The new model would emphasize the following:
- Learning by doing.
- "Real world" design as a base for the curriculum
- Interdisciplinary/collaborative approach (e.g. designers, sociologists, ecologists, etc.)
- Tangible results.
- Redefinition of values.
- Consensus model
- Introduce students from a broad variety of disciplines into the studio, empowering students as essential team members.
- Encourage community projects; they often do more with less.
- De-emphasize the terms "students" and "faculty." We are all "learners" on the globe.
Design for sustainability crosses disciplinary lines, however, interdisciplinary approaches have been absent in conventional college and university curricula. In a sustainability context, Eco-Center’s potential contribution is a unified theory of human settlement to relate all scales--large scale bioregions, city regions, neighborhoods, urban fabric, and ultimately, individual buildings and open spaces. The compartmentalized world of different disciplines and different systems works against that notion of a unified theory. People who work on human settlements should have a common core design education, before specializing in various disciplines. Common core design education participants would include architects and engineers working on transportation, soils, and hydrology or civil engineering; landscape architects, planners, and natural scientists/environmentalists. All design human settlements. Afterwards, each specializes according to their individual scale of intervention.
In the existing culture of architecture education, the traditional studio model has placed emphasis on individual work for a studio master, prizing originality and individuality. The jury system has rewarded and encouraged individualistic behaviors and attitudes. In contrast, designing for sustainability requires collaboration. The biggest impediment to learning to collaborate is an ethos with which students are inculcated early on. Often, the first signal they get from the jury system is that collaboration, even with their fellow architecture students, is problematic. The primacy of invention over convention, in many ways an unstated principle in schools of architecture, is fundamentally at odds with societal needs and a sustainable approach. What the Eco-Center provides is a paradigm shift from obsessive concern with originality and incrementalism to a healthy and healing intention to create innovations that enhance sustainable development methods and to integrate inventive solutions into a unified method for sustainable living and livelihoods. A well-integrated innovation may have such a low profile that it could go unrecognized. A reward or incentive system to recognize good collaborative work must be created. Inventing alternate rites to reward cooperative attitudes and sensibilities may help students develop new values. Sustainability as a societal project or discipline requires quality in individual projects, but within collective discipline.
Many kinds of skills will come out of the Eco-Center’s interdisciplinary reorientation: architect/urban-planners working on a very large scale; others work on buildings; and some work on the design of product. A wider range of design problems will involve collaboration with people of different disciplines at a broader range of scales.
An interdisciplinary approach:
Provide rewards and incentives for collaboration and interdisciplinary work in teaching and learning.
Develop a common core curriculum for the design of human settlement, built on ecological interdisciplinary principles.
Encourage the relation of various design disciplines through projects and scales of work on human settlements that cross-disciplinary lines.
Establish goals and roles for Eco-Center graduates within a broadened view of the process and participants in the development of sustainable communities.
For advanced studies the Eco-Center will de-emphasize image, style, and originality for its own sake and shift focus to issues articulated above, while generating self-esteem.
Promote sharing of information effectively across disciplines utilizing current technology.
Build on the strengths and diversity of existing exemplars (e.g. schools and centers) of interdisciplinary education.
Reward students with medals or awards for collaboration and/or sustainability.
Core Curriculum to include: introductory courses in sustainability, with sustainable thrust in existing courses, and in special seminars.
Participate in Web Community building and internet based learning and Solaroofgarden development programs in Partnership with Eco-Center.
Develop more virtual Eco-Centers among schools, countries, business, etc.
In the whole-systems curriculum model, both the physical and intellectual environments of the curriculum must be conveyed as a model of the world. The living laboratory of the whole-systems model is analogous to the idea of classroom as pedagogy. Instead of linear progression, lack of horizontal coordination, and walls that divide us into segments, the whole-systems model advocates that any knowledge domain be linked and related to a context. The progression of an education is marked by evidence that a student is capable of combining domains from the previous level. The Eco-Center becomes the container for the rest of the curriculum, however appropriate methods remains an open, continually revisited question around which to construct the rest of the curriculum. Instead of increasing complexity additively, the whole-systems model proposes cyclically reiterating an engagement with wholeness. As intensity increases, the sophistication of tools and methods that students use increases, and the curriculum shifts with increasing sophistication of tools.
Internet and Distance Learning
Our project will identify and develop an instructionally sound, economical, pervasive, state-of-the-art interactive distance delivery system, which will provide working adult students with a means to improve their respective work-related skills.
Experts unanimously recognize the advantages of distance education programs such as proposed. Several of the advantages we see are: a) scheduling flexibility of course instruction allows study around work schedules; b) completion of coursework from a California State University (CSU) campus geographically removed from their residence; c) pace of instruction is compatible with their adult lifestyle; and d) physical limitations do not compromise their ability to enroll and progress through a program of study.
Current distance learning technologies are capable of delivering on many of these benefits, but the effort must continue to connect rural America to technology-based instructional networks being designed for urban centers. To remain competitive in the changing world of distance learning, the Eco-Center will distribute instructional programming over the internet, thus not limiting student participation in coursework because of scheduling, geographical or interactivity concerns.
The Eco-Center acknowledges that higher education is at a “crossroads” due to the changes in student demographics, changes in society and technologies, and changes in the economics of education. With that as a framework, the Eco-Center is planning a near term distance education curriculum that will need to be free of the constraints of time and space; faculty, assignments, now based on classes will be linked to students; there will be a shift from local education to global education; faculty will have differentiated functions and specialization’s; education is becoming learner-centered, rather than teacher-centered; and education will become results-oriented and largely driven by the marketplace.
We will implement “Televised and Technology Supported Instructional Programs - offered through the rapid growth of the Internet that now makes possible the delivery of courses and degrees via computer programmed instruction to people living anywhere in the nation or world. An Eco-Center Website is also being planned in hopes of increasing educational access and to contain costs of delivery of our programs to all communities (Rural and Urban). Members of our programs who may be located in America or in the region or in other tropical climates will be associated in a virtual Web Community which is designed for all to participate in LEARNING through sharing their personal experiences in DOING.
These extension services are a critical component for achieving mission to reach outside of the instructional environment and support the application of sustainable development in the community into our sphere of work. This aspect of our work will set our program apart from so many others. Our purpose is to transform information into knowledge in the minds of our graduates and then continue to support their steps in applyingwhat they have learned so that it becomes, in their hands a real and valuable know-how.
The Eco-Center, through its Distance Learning Division (DLD) will distribute credit courses and certification programs via digital satellite technology to a variety of receive sites throughout America and other countries. DLD will actively support the development of a Virtual University, which would package and market the collective distance delivered technology based academic courses originating from each our University Partners. DLD, by the virtue of the production of new WEB-based courses will become a key player within the operation of the proposed Virtual University.
What is clearly needed at this point is a successful demonstration of the value of this approach in rural communities such as those selected for this project. During the first year of the grant rural communities will be selected and each site will be surveyed and ultimately categorized according to need of instruction. The second year of the grant will involve the identification of five additional rural sites to become a part of this unique network delivering educational program to rural sites.
Each technological innovation quickly establishes a benefits/limitations listing during the beginning phases of development. Identifying the optimum applications of an instructional delivery technology and incorporating those applications into a distance education program greatly determines the success of a project. This project will likewise demonstrate the many and varied methods of delivery credit and non-credit programming via desktop conferencing. Rural communities have historically been behind urban centers in the use of new technological tools to receive information. This project will reverse that trend and provide select rural sites with a new innovative means to improve the delivery of educational programs for career advancement and training.
Desktop conferencing, a new communications and instructional technology-based tool, can provide the means for implementing real-time face-to-face interaction in rural-based distant education programs. Delivering audio and/or video data generated from a desktop conferencing system located on a personal computer is an economical and programmatic reality. The cost of the software, modems, line and access charges, coupled with personal computers will allow many educational organizations to establish multiple receive sites without overextending program budgets.
The occupational education emphasis of the Eco-Center certification allows for a curriculum, which can be delivered to several distinct audiences. Vocational teachers, adult education teachers and public service personnel including community program leaders, planners, architects, builders and developers and their staff are a few of the targeted audiences which should participate will participate in the Eco-Center programs and/or the DLD program.
The work experience portfolio also necessitates a significant amount of face-to-face advisement due to the various ways of documenting and expressing the required information. Working with students several hundred miles away from the degree granting campus also requires communication with students on key issues such as registration, records, course assignments, senior projects, and graduation checks.
From the above, we see the need for a program to include the development and implementation of a more effective tool for initiating and conducting student advisement and delivering of course instruction. The initial planning for the DLD program assumes the use of an on-site coordinator coupled with on-site visitation from the project/faculty director providing frequent and meaningful face-to-face interactions that bring greater effectiveness to the distance learning environment.
The need for a systematized and personal advising/consultation and course delivery system for DLDstudents will become more of an issue as the number of sites requesting access to this program increases.
EcoCenter Certified Green Building Curriculum
The Green Building Certification Program is the primary vehicle by which the Eco-Center will fulfill its responsibility to meet the lifelong personal and professional development learning needs of citizens, industries, and institutions within its service area and beyond. Through its certificate programs, credit and non-credit classes, seminars and special workshops, distance delivered instruction, and customized on-site-training, the Eco-Center brings the resources of to individuals and groups at times, locations, and in formats convenient to their diverse lifestyles.
The Distance Learning Program (DLD) is a division that is responsible for developing and delivering the distance learning programming opportunities from the Eco-Center, which may include:
- Degree level programs and advanced studies in sustainable development
- Satellite delivered instruction for bilingual educators
- BVE videotape-based degree program
- Weekend certificate programs delivering professional development and continuing adult educational development for civic and community leaders
- Select upper level general education and teacher education courses designed to support WEB-based delivery
The Eco-Center would actively pursue the development and the delivery of new and innovative distance learning programs for underserved markets throughout the region. Being responsive to student needs and providing seamless instruction and services to each student has been a major goal within the mission of all Eco-Center projects.
- RATIONALE AND SIGNIFICANCE
Rural communities within the America and the Region have been underserved by the major universities and colleges, which service their respective residents. The small numbers of potential students limit the practical delivery of outreach programs and make them financially in viable for any educational institution. The Eco-Center is located in a location yet to be identified - however, this project will meet the rural delivery and service challenge by designing and promoting an inexpensive, interactive, state-of-the-art distance delivery system. Furthermore, this desktop rural network will prove to be self-supporting even with limited student enrollments at each participating site.
The impact of this project will prove significant to other rural sites desiring educational opportunities, which have been too distant or too expensive to participate in higher education. The educational opportunity gap between urban and rural communities can be closed and a model program established for consideration by other regions in addition to becoming a self-sustaining program offered into the future by the Eco-Center to tropical climate countries and also adapted (as a model system) to programs in other climate zones.
- GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
Goals
- A desktop conference network consisting of the originating Eco-Center site, and five rural sites will be identified and developed during the first year and five rural sites will be identified and developed for the second year.
- A minimum of five students at each site will be recruited in successive years.
- The combined delivery of Eco-Center coursework by desktop conferencing and upper-division General Education coursework via the WEB will serve as a successful model for future rural sites.
- The program will be designed so that student fees following the completion of the grant will contribute towards the financial support of the entire rural network.
Objectives
1.1 To contribute so that horticulture practiced at a small scale becomes a profitable activity and worthy of being exercised as permanent activity of generation of economic development and human well being in the poor communities.
1.2 To strengthen the family economy, generating revenues, increasing the quantity and the quality of the feeding, without increasing the costs of food purchase.
1.3 To create work sources in cities or populations where there are limitations for the appropriately remunerated employment.
1.4 To generate and to promote positive attitudes toward the community administration, fomenting the employment generation leaving of mini productive companies of family administration.
1.5 To give to people of advanced age or with physical limitations the possibility to feel useful and valuable for their family and for the community in which they live.
1.6 To teach the children the nutritious value of the vegetables and fruit and to motivate them to participate in productive activities at family and community level.
1.7 To promote the consumption of fresh vegetables on the part of the poor families without cost of purchase.
1.8 To promote among those currently involved in urban agriculture the use of simplified hydroponics to increase production, or utilize sunspace not currently in use. To promote practices that reduces environmental impacts or urban agriculture including conservation of water, reduction or elimination of fertilizer runoff, and reduction of use of pesticides and elimination of herbicides.
1.9 To promote in impoverished countries, simplified hydroponics as a form of developing among the residents of precarious economic situation, abilities for the generation of small companies producing market vegetables and other plants of high sanitary and biological quality.
1.10To promote among the small horticultural producers, through the technical simplified hydroponics, the convenience of applying a complete vegetable nutrition to obtain maxims crops in yield and quality.
TASKS
- To identify five rural communities, this would serve as excellent receptive sites for the DLD desktop conference rural network for the first year of the grant.
- To identify an additional five rural communities, this would serve as expansion sites for the DLD desktop conference rural network.
- To select a coordinator at each rural site to assist in the delivery of the instruction and to provide appropriate training.
- To develop a technological infrastructure at Eco-Center this will deliver DLD instruction during the duration of the grant and beyond.
- To provide appropriate student advising via the DLD desktop rural network this will enable them to complete the program.
D. SCOPE OF WORK
Task I
The project team consists of a variety of qualified faculty and staff from the Eco-Center who are experts by degree, training and experience in their particular field. These talented individuals will work together as our project team to organize, guide and deliver a model distance learning partnership to rural sites as proposed.
Task II
In this task the Eco-Center team will reach out to the rural sites and go through the following steps:
1.We will look closely into what the rural communities need. We will reach out to the citizens and ask questions, listen and learn while developing a rapport with our end user.
2.The partnership will strive to attain a common goal, shared commitment and solutions to how the technologies proposed can help them achieve their objectives and goals.
3.Meet and confer with appropriate UNDP liaisons for project refinements, if any.
Task III
During this task we will train individuals whom the communities have chosen or we will help identify the best qualified person to become a technological assistant site coordinator. The hands on training will be through and quite extensive. We will bring those individuals to our facilities for a comprehensive training seminar on the actual cutting-edge telecommunications technologies that each rural site will be using. In addition to the hands on training seminar we will also be involved in all aspects of two-way interactive communications training. Additional tasks will include but not limited too site visits and continuous technical support to insure the effectiveness to the end user.
Task IV
Market Programs
- Recruit and enroll students in Bachelors Vocational Education degree program (list and schedule)
- Recruit and enroll students in non-credit courses (list and schedule)
Task V Adjust timetable and deliveries as necessary and begin project services.
Task VI
Conduct formal evaluation and execute dissemination plan.
Scope of work: Year 2
Task VII
Develop a plan of action for year two of the project. This includes reconvening the project team to capitalize on the lessons learned during year one of the project. Begin program-marketing process.
Task VIII
The Eco-Center project team will be responsible for demonstrating the merit of this project throughout America and subsequently solicit the applications of five new rural sites. The five new sites will be expected to attain the same goals. Commitments and solutions associated with the five sites established for the initial phase of this project.
Task IX
A site coordinator from each new site will be identified and trained in the application of interactive desktop technology. Each site coordinator will be provided with a cursory knowledge of the BVE degree requirements (for participation and completion) and assist-interested students in enrolling in the program.
Task X
Marketing the BVE degree to students within the second selection of rural receive sites will be an ongoing function initiated in task VII. All marketing activities will culminate in this task.
Task XI
Begin program delivery, adjust timetable and deliveries as necessary and continue with project services.
Task XII
Formal evaluation and execute dissemination plan.
E. EXPECTED RESULTS
With the completion of this grant it is expected that a fully functioning rural desktop network will have been developed and regularly receiving course instruction from the Eco-Center. Each of the selected sites will be equipped with a state-of-the-art desktop conferencing system. The software utilized by this project will provide for interactive communication and the ability to share documentation and information from the host site to all network sites simultaneously.
Each rural network receive site will additionally benefit from this project by having a site coordinator trained in the operation of the conferencing system. The site coordinator will also be able to serve as a key liaison from the rural site to the Eco-Center staff and the DLD outreach coordinator which will add a higher level of service to all of the rural students entering the program.
Because the initial program offerings will focus on vocational education and related certification and degree requirements, a cohort of students at each site will receive the opportunity to advance their career opportunities. The community will additionally benefit by having well informed and trained educators working with vocational students.
F. LIMITATIONS
Based on our extensive experience with the core elements of this activity the project team fully expects to be able to meet the goals and objectives as outlined above. Obviously dealing with remote locations that have a variety of technical readiness and differing market demand will present a challenge to project staff. Within the area of connectivity, the matter of the capacity of the Internet service provider(s) will require special attention. In addition, participants may at times be subjected to Internet interference, a condition wherein connections are such that messages are not always received clearly. Finally, the end users, i.e. students, will obviously have a widely varying level of readiness to utilize the full functions of the new telecommunication capacity and services that they will now have, many of them for the first time.
The ANPRC Eco-Center ICCT* For Development of an Internet BasedWeb Community
The Eco-Center would become the principal sponsor of the Eco-Center Global Web Community to establish a Solaroofgarden initiative for the collaboration and sharing of know-how for Solaroofgarden projects that individuals and families can undertake to build sustainable homes and communities. Under the Solaroofgarden Initiative Eco-Center Partners will make social investment contributions for the implementation of sustainable development projects by the ordinary members of the web community. This collective support will be given to individuals and families who are most in need and have the least means. Our Members are encouraged to form Teams to implement these Solaroofgarden projects at the local level. The Solaroofgarden projects in multitudes of localities will duplicate the impact of the Eco-Center by providing visible demonstration of Green Building methods and sustainable development know-how.
HERE IS OUR GOAL:
The collaborative network established through Solaroof in association with ANPRC Eco-Centerwould establish the *InformationCommunicationAnd Collaboration Technology(“ICCT”) as a Global Extension Service to provide Team Members access to intranet servicesthat permit the individuals to publish their project plan at a Team Website, which is then accessible to other Eco-Center Members who can give advice, feedback and financial support. The Teams are to work ascollaborationswith Advisors selected to join the Team from among our University association and certified graduates. These interactions are essential to the vision for wide spread projects and for the provision of the necessary Global support and encouragement to the Local Team Members as they implement the Solaroofgarden Project.
WHAT WE WILL ACHIEVE
Many of the Eco-Center Members in the developing world may not be able to afford the cost of ISP services, such as an email account and access to an intranet where they can author and publish WebPages that will permit the collaboration as envisioned above. Therefore the kind of services that described below would be ideal for our Solaroofgarden community to grow in all parts of the world and reach those in the developing world without concern about how the costs will be covered. Not wanting to make a distinction between Members I would like to be able to offer the same access to these services to all Members of the Solaroofgarden community. What I will propose is that those who can afford a payment for these services will make a voluntary contribution to cover the costs of these services and surplus of these funds, if any, would flow through to the Solaroofgarden initiative to financially assist the Team Projects that are underway or in a planning stage.
The intranet services would be available to all the Members of the Solaroofgarden community and would be accessed through portal pages on the Eco-Center website where visitors may sign up to become members and then register for these intranet services and join Teams. Individuals will be able to find fellow collaborators and advisors and Teams will poll their existing members to accept new team members and advisory members. Having established a working group the Teams would then begin the planning and implementation of their projects.
Visitors and other Members of the Solaroofgarden community will be able to rate theSolaroofgarden projects, offer advice and comments and provide direct financial support to the project. A project budget and a target for financial support will be established as part of the published project plan. Direct financial contributions (by any visitors) and votes by Members will create a non-administrative and strictly merit based evaluation of the existing projects by the entire Membership and the public at large. All projects will then receive an allocation prorate from any indirect contributions (from our commercial Sponsors and Partners, for example) and from any surplus general revenues. After costs have been covered all contributions will flow through to the Solaroofgarden Projects covering each project up to the stated goal amount. The method for the handling of funds would be decentralized and made transparent as a published database; possibly using a mechanism similar to the payments system of www.DevelopmentSpace.com.
http://www.globalgiving.com/news/ds_02-08-06.html
http://www.globalgiving.com/
http://www.knowledgerush.com/kr/encyclopedia/DevelopmentSpace.com/
With theEco-Centersupport these components would be incorporated into the EcoCenter Web Community services:
An Intranet including these features:
· A personal e-mail system
· Facilities for document management (creation, editing, storage and commenting) known as “conferences”
· Facilities for private & public chat
· Facilities for establishing and posting documents onto a web-page (for Team Leaders)
Solaroofgarden– A WEB COMMUNITY DEDICATED TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT:
http://solaroof.org/wiki/SolaRoof/SolaRoofGarden/
The Solaroofgarden community would become a DIY portal for sustainable development technology. All the know-how presented on our site will be provided on an “opensource” basis, which means that there are no proprietary restrictions, and no payments are required for the use of this technology(click here for more information on the opensource concept). Furthermore the technology and information is available to all members for their personal non-commercial use without any cost (but also without any warrantee as being fit for any particular use) and can be modified and reproduced without restriction. The Solaroofgarden community is business friendly; any individual or group can make commercial use of the know-how and those who can afford are requested to make a voluntary payment of 3% to 10% of their revenue from the use of the know-how, according to the value received and their desire to support the Solaroofgarden Projects. Many small professional and construction services business may be established – all with access to the same growing body of know-how. All funds (called Honor Payments) that flow from commercial Partners, who are Materials, Components and Product manufacturersandService companies, firms and consultants will go (as described above) to the support of the current Solaroofgarden Projects. Businesses will be linked to the community website and our Members will relate to them not as “consumers” but as a powerful and empowering collective purchasing group that can set specifications and standards and obtain commodity prices.
Individuals are asked to a voluntary contribution of money for their personal use of Solaroofgarden concepts in their homes or communities, and the individuals and families in the developed nations (the North) are encouraged to assess the value received and in exchange offer a contribution to the Solaroofgarden initiative (Families helping Families). When these Solaroofgarden Projects have had a beneficial result and have helped families and communities in the South to rise out of poverty these people who have been helped are encouraged to extent their support and financial assistance to others who have need to build a project. This “pay-it-forward” policy is similar to that of Habitat for Humanity and can involve the contribution of direct labor by those who have previous experience to offer in the construction and implementation of Eco-Center projects.
THE BENEFITS AND EXPECTED RESULTS
Eco-Center projects are specialized for tropical zones however many of the Green Building methods will be adaptable to northern regions and therefore we anticipate that the Solaroofgarden Web Community will draw membership from many countries. The Green Building methods are appropriate for both the North and South and will help to bridge the development gap by enabling the North to consume less non-renewable resources and to use natural, renewable resources more efficiently. In every home or community our methods will create food & water supply security and safety and contribute to energy self-sufficiency that create the LOCAL conditions that contribute to GLOBAL security and peace.
The Solaroofgarden Initiative will engender Leadership and Participation by individuals, families and communities across all cultural and ethnic lines. It encourages the formation of Teams that will bring North and South together (through the internet and intranet) in a GLOBAL collaboration that brings wide spread human resources to focus on the practical support the LOCAL implementation of projects. The publication of project plans and results will assist the diffusion and adoption of best practices for sustainable development. The Eco-Center policy of “opensource” publication of know-how will inspire worldwide collaboration and has the potential to arrive at fundamental solutions to hunger and could mobilize the creativity to win the war on poverty. Sharing our experience with sustainable living and livelihood will help to pull everyone up the learning curve and many mistakes and loss of time and effort will be achieved.
Introduction to the ANPRC ECO-CENTER concepts:
It is not well recognized that conventional buildings have a greater energy demand and environmental impact than the transportation sector – and there is little effort to advance the technology of building design. A home, for the average person is the largest personal investment we will make in our life and yet our homes produce no yield, return or benefit other than shelter (and sometimes – comfort – depending on our level of spending). The solar energy that is received by the roof areas of buildings on the average exceeds by several times the energy consumed for a building’s cooling and lighting. But buildings are not adapted to harvest this energy. The roof construction is generally opaque although artificial lighting is exclusively dependent on electricity – our most costly form of energy. Water is precious, yet rarely is there any urban or building design priority given to the efficient collection of rainfall. Food in cities is in great demand but the urban landscape is bare roofs, concrete and asphalt – a desert that overheats in the sun. The urban rooftop space is a resource that is unused, close at hand and of great value.
I believe it is important to note that, while the countries in the North and Temperate climate zones extensively research solar technology, the technologies developed to date have had little effect or impact in the Tropical climates. It is clear that the engineering principles for cooling buildings are not well established (except by resorting to expensive air-conditioning) and there is little understanding of how to use to advantage the abundance of solar energy available in the Tropics. The only result we get is the predictable over heating of our buildings. Our Solaroof technology utilizes solar radiation for day lighting, and in addition our technological breakthrough is a new solar energy processes that eliminates the over-heating of the building and the related cooling and/or air-conditioning cost. The extension of these methods to encompass greenroofs and greenspaces in our buildings is known as the Eco-Center method, which will be a large part of the studies that will be undertaken at the Eco-Centers.
The Eco-Center Green Building technology will bring to the Tropics and Subtropics, which includes the Arid-Land Regions of the world, a greater prospect for economically sustainable development and concurrently a lesser rate of consumption of nonrenewable fossil fuels (which can preserve these valuable resources for export earnings and/or future generations). Urban development in the Tropics that is based upon the Green Building methods developed in our curriculum will counteract the negative aspects of rapid urbanization that is currently underway (and expected to accelerate) by providing construction systems that do not rely on conventional air-conditioning technology. Green Building methods such as the Solaroofgarden technology will enable economic expansion and development in the Tropics while minimizing the generation of new sources of CO2 that would contribute to global warming.
Solaroof technology is based upon the use of plants for their ability to transform solar radiant energy into the latent chemical energy of transpired water vapor. Plants efficiently achieve this transformation of energy as a natural byproduct of their Phytomechanisms related to plant growth. The Solaroof energy process both requires and makes possible the growing of a plant leaf canopy beneath the Solaroof. Our roof-level "open access technology" for hydroponic crop production delivers this "Phytotechnology" as an integral component of the Eco-Center construction.
The R & D Program –Solutions for Sustainable Tropics Living
The Tropics and Subtropics offer several options for the configuration of the Eco-Center, including: 1) rooftop; 2) roof-level controlled environment systems; 3) solar controlled environment greenhouse (referred to as the "SCE Greenhouse"); or, 4) Eco-Center superstructures which span over and shade roof terraces and courtyard spaces below.
Option 3) above, the SCE Greenhouse, presents an alternative to conventional field agriculture which is far more productive and does not consume tremendous amounts of fuel for tractors and transportation, fertilizers and agricultural chemicals as does field agriculture. By comparison crop production in the SCE Greenhouse can produce 20 times the yield, much higher rates of return on investment and minimizes the use of petrochemical inputs for crop production. Using the Solaroof technology the SCE Greenhouse can be built and function efficiently in extremely hot climatic conditions and can occupy poorer unproductive land. The SCE Greenhouse can achieve important water conservation and energy conservation objectives for the nation.
Green building technology can reduce the devastation of forest and wildlife lands, which are being appropriated, for low output, high input agriculture. Ecologically destructive and marginal agriculture is no solution for economic development in the Tropics -- it is not sustainable and is only justified by short-term financial thinking.
SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT
The ANPRC ECO-CENTER is a new concept that produces "Solar Controlled Environments ", referred to as "SCE", which are used to build sustainable building projects that are often referred to as “Green Buildings”. The ECO-CENTER design integrates all the structural, mechanical, environmental and biological systems on the model of living systemsso that this technology is in ecological balance and harmony with nature. This approach, to be researched, developed and demonstrated by the ANPRC Eco-Centers, has the purpose of achieving the integration of the living, growth processes of plants called,"phytomechanisms", within the SCE. The operation and study of such advanced closed environment systems will permit us to study, more extensively then ever previously possible, how the phytomechanisms work, permitting in turn, a further refinement of our understanding of the ECO-CENTER concepts, as follows:
http://www.solaroof.org/wiki/SolaRoof/OpenEcoCenterNetwork
1. Advanced Energy Studiesof the Solar Controlled Environment will be undertaken to determine how it is able to modulate solar radiation by means of the liquid bubbles and water-cooling processes. The study of "cool day-lighting" will determine how to best use our advanced radiative filter mechanisms and other heat rejection and energy conversion methods as follows:
- Ambient energy is completely and efficiently captured and absorbed using our water-cooling and thermal mass system. Dew-point temperature control of the roof liner by means of the water-cooling provides powerful energy transfer mechanisms including condensation, thermal radiation absorption and conductive heat transfer.
- Ambient Energy utilization is provided by the liquid bubbles system, which can dynamically distribute throughout the building envelope the cooling energy available form ambient heat sinks such as ground, lake/river or ocean water resources. Energy rejection by means of the chiller process will also be studied. This new process is capable of rejecting energy surpluses from the Solar Structure system in the form of the latent heat of vaporization that is induced, by the flow of low-pressure air, from the thin-film water cooling system.
- The optimization of the use of natural lighting under the translucent solaroof will be studied as well as the development of improved lamp design with integrated waste energy removal from artificial lighting systems.
- A further development goal is the conservation of the water vapor generated in the Solar Structure by the chiller process. This pure water precipitate together with the energy released can be a valuable resource, if recovered. Therefore, we have incorporated a further process within the Solar Structure that collects the energy released from the precipitation of this vapor and transfers this energy to a closed cycle gas turbine for electrical power production.
2. Advanced Lightweight Structures Studiesfor the utilization of open-web-aluminum-joists and extrusions, which are integrated with a modular membrane stressed-panel, building envelope. Studies will include:
- Materials technologies will be investigated for the transparent cover materials including a system for dynamic reaction (of the stressed-panels) to high wind conditions for the purpose of resistance to typhoon force.
- The inherent, high resistance of the building to fire and earthquake will also be evaluated. Due to its high safety factor, this construction will be found to be ideal for the establishment of sustainable urban development and avoid crises brought about by global warming and climate change.
http://www.solaroof.org/wiki/SolaRoof/OpenEcoDesign
3. Intelligent Control Systems Studiesfor the development by the Computer Science and Knowledge Group, of computer based automation of SCE, including:
- The determination of the thermal properties and operating principles governing the design and control of the novel ECO-CENTER energy systems in terms of their use in SCE applications.
- The formulation and testing of a general mathematical model and the application and testing of the model in the optimization of design as well as the development of a control strategy for the proposed SCE facilities.
4. Study of Advanced Biotechnology Systemswithin the ECO-CENTER demonstration facilities will provide an instructional and research closed atmosphere SCE using automation and expert systems for biological crop production, including:
- Humidity control, involving recovery and reuse transpired water vapor from crop growth for food crop production and drinking water;
- A CO2 enriched atmosphere for enhanced plant growth rate;
- Positive pressure atmosphere for the prevention of infiltration atmospheric pollutants and biological vectors while using biological pest controls used to maintain healthy, chemical free crop production;
- Aerobic, microbial and aquatic-plant systems for treatment organic biomass;
- Development of methods for mass culture of nitrogen fixating algae to substitute for synthetic nitrogen sources in crop production;
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE ECOCENTER
GREEN BUILDING PROGRAMS
- ENERGY & CONTROLLED STUDIES
- MATERIALS & STRUCTURES STUDIES
http://www.solaroof.org/wiki/AlmeriaProject/TechnicalProposal
- CLIMATE ENVIRONMENT MODELS
http://www.solaroof.org/wiki/SolaRoof/EnergyCrisis
- BIOTECHNOLOGY STUDIES
http://www.solaroof.org/wiki/SolaRoof/PhytotechnologyBiomassSystems
- Organic waste recycling
www.goodearthnow.com